Has its Shadow
by L. Honoria
Summary: A theory as to why Annie attempted suicide. Based on the original series and its scripts.


A/N: A passage from Tennessee Williams' _Summer and Smoke_ is included, the first in this story to appear in italics.

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~oOo~

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Annie turned the glass in her hand, looking up as a shadow approached. The boy sat near her on the ground. He touched her wrist in dots, it and the thin bone leading upwards. One press above, one forgotten.

Her gaze moved over the lawn.

A patch of rust on her lawn chair had hold of the lace along the hem of her sundress, as she'd positioned her bare feet behind the legs of her chair. The boy, her boy, was kissing the unseen marks he'd created. Dullness, a convalescence, came over Annie as she felt the blood drain from where his grip tightened, the skin in a ring turning white.

As her heavy eyes followed him, she noticed that he seemed to sway on his bent knees as he raised. His back stooped as he left the ground, calmly straightening his jacket with a solid jerk once stable.

Annie's gaze returned to the white circle around her wrist, her heart beating out a steady rhythm.

He kissed her and turned away, following the line of grass to the side of her house and to the street. Seconds later she knew he was gone.

She moved a foot from around the leg of the chair and straight out, seeing its shadow on the lawn beneath. She did the same with her other leg then slowly raised from the chair, pulling out the blade of rust, and walked a few lines over the yard before going inside.

The house was empty and still. The strange, eerie yellow of outside entered in beams through windows, between thin curtains in streaks on the floor.

 _"You have to read it with your fingers. I did and it gave me cold shivers. You read it and see if it doesn't give you cold shivers! Go on! Read it with your fingers!"_

Annie hummed, trying to find a book. She looked at a picture on a wall and then to a vase of flowers, changed in the light after a storm, as she entered her room.

A few minutes later the front door opened and closed, and Annie could hear the floorboards under the carpet faintly creak as the woman who'd entered the house drifted. Annie could hear her abruptly stop down the hall. Norma could sense her sister was home.

There was a knock on her door. "Hey, you hungry?" Her voice was low, calm, backlit by happiness.

"No. I'm fine."

Norma opened the door. She noticed that Annie was fully dressed, sitting on the edge of her bed as she searched through a shoe box littered with costume jewelry. "You going to a movie with your beau?"

"We're going walking."

"This late at night?" Norma crossed her arms and leaned against the frame of the door. "I don't know how you'll see anything."

"I'll see plenty. Probably more than in the light of day."

Norma moved into the room, sitting beside her sister on the bed. Annie felt her fingers on the nape of her neck, pulling her hair away and sectioning it. Norma leaned over Annie as she reached for a comb on a table beside the bed.

"You'd better wear your jacket. It's getting cold out there."

Annie chewed on her lip. "Did you see Ed tonight?"

As she knew she would, Norma paused before she resumed combing her sister's hair. "Yes. For a few minutes. He stopped by the diner."

"I knew there was a reason for your good mood."

Norma's disposition shifted to that of distance and remorse, Annie could feel it in the ends of her moving fingers. There was no need for an exchange of words.

"He said Nadine was keeping him busy."

Annie looked to her pillow for a reply but found none. Norma gently placed her hands on her sister's shoulder's and gave them a nudge to indicate she was finished. Norma then raised from the bed and made for the door, turning to Annie she smiled. "Have a nice time."

There was a vacancy in her words, or maybe Annie had imagined it. Maybe it was only fear.

"And be careful," Norma could be heard saying as she left the room.

After a few more minutes of searching until she found her necklace, Annie forced herself to leave the bed and the room, to reenter the halls of the house.

The lights were low. She could see the blue-white light of the television screen moving back and forth on the walls, the carpets. There was laughter in the room containing her sister. False, tinny laughter and music.

She went in the kitchen looking for her handbag. It was hanging over the back of a chair at the dining table. Taking it and pushing its long strap over her shoulder, she went back to her room, remembering her jacket.

There was a noise outside as she came back, a tapping at glass. He was outside, the one she called hers.

Annie opened the window. His head entered the curtains, but he stopped inches from her before entering in full. "Now. No time."

She studied him questionably, for she had at that moment wanted something, felt the need for something as though later she'd regret it. A sweater, a bag, something, but he ushered her out the window. Holding his hand, she followed as if under a spell.

All of this she would keep to herself. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't, didn't want to, plan even as far ahead as the night.

It would happen no matter what she might do to stop it.

She did not know how, but they were in time in the woods. In the trees as the darkness closed in on them. Her head fell forward, suddenly too heavy on her shoulders. "Oh don't. Don't." But she didn't know what she was saying no to or where she was going. It was dark, and she could hear something, someone out there. Watching her.

Hands were on her, scaring her, and as she turned she saw the boy's teeth and his long hair moving slower than his body. She yelled without meaning to, and he placed a hand to her mouth. "Shh," he hissed. "You want everyone to hear?!"

She shook her head 'no' under his grip. He lowered his hand, resting it on her neck, against her pulse.

"Annie, don't you know? How can't you know."

She felt she did, but she didn't. All she could do was dumbly reply as she walked, her feet catching on branches. She didn't know why she was following him now, only that she trusted him.

She was in the darkness with him. She'd succumbed to a sleep, to one of hypnosis, and in a glimpse she awoke to see a man above her. His hair gray, his eyes dark and distant.

He flashed back, her boyfriend. She saw that it was him, he and the grayhaired man were the same. One inhabiting the other. He touched her chin, and she saw a white cloud leave his head, filtering toward her. She'd screamed and felt something rise within her, a block, a force created, but it wasn't enough.

She felt the man inside her mind, raking over memories before leaving, the smoke moving backwards in a trail to the man before her.

".ni em tel ll'uoY"

Sight left her.

When she woke, she was in her bed and it all seemed like a dream. A very horrible dream. She stayed in place, seeing him. Feeling it all again as it had happened, and his words. She would let him in, she knew she would, as if there would in the future be no fight. She saw herself as his. The seconds he had been inside her, how that had felt. How draining. Evil. How none of it seemed real. It ran like a shiver over her, wanting badly to leave her body but was trapped.

All those times where had he taken her ... were these woods her memories, these of the woods. In them what had she lost? With this awakening she saw a death of what she thought she knew.

Had it happened before? Had she seen that man before? She knew it; he was not new. His was a presence known and forgotten.

She needed to do anything. Anything to not be his. To not live through that again.

To die is the only way, someone told her. The only way to be free from him is to die.

If that man went inside her, if he was capable of that, what would she do? That he could move through her, live through her, and she would be powerless to stop him.

After that she would have no reason to live.

 _All the blood that comes out of me is mine to give. Is mine to give. All that comes out of me. From my womb, my wrists. When you enter me and the blood spills is it not me giving it to you. But it was not my choice._

Annie saw his face, the way he no longer looked human. How he'd transformed. Something in between. She had never been so frightened in her life. It was a fear that started deep inside, not only her heart but her entire soul. Staring at him, she felt herself being crushed, dying inside. She couldn't speak.

A moth flew by, and in her mind a fountain passed, one with green lights. Blue lights. Under the stairs, now dry.

 _I found him in the mirrors, in the palm of my hand I saw his face instead of mine and with the blades I wanted to bleed him dry. Giving back to the world the blood he'd taken from me and would have continued to feed from, as he feeds from the boy I love._

Annie faded. She reappeared in different rooms she found in red and white and black. The world came to her in between bursts of light, pulsed as though with breath. Lights shone from behind the red curtains, showing the pattern on the wood floors. All deep and dark, an almost onyx glow.

In an empty room, a man was standing across from her in a corner. He was in the shadows, his face obscured, never moving. He wore black. As time passed, and she moved to other rooms, she saw the man reappear in areas other than the ones she left him in. She could sense his contents.

Parting the curtains and walking through, she landed on the floor in a pool of blood. Somehow she knew the blood was her own. When she looked down to her wrists as they began to bleed. She crawled across the floor, her feet sliding behind her, the blood making it too difficult to stand. Her dress soaked, she walked on her knees two steps as her limbs gave out and suddenly she found herself lying on the ground. She closed her eyes, but a man's laughter brought her back.

There were distant chimes of music, something that raised like a wall and fell.

".nwes s'it woh taht t'nsI"

His laugh was like a bark played backwards. His hand was at the base of her neck, another her hip. Her blood was still leaving. She felt it taking with it her life, her thoughts. Her head hollow with its signature.

In his coat pocket would she find. Would she find the paper with his words as before? Soaked and heavy, the words of his calling. She was too weak, too beyond caring, to search. Growls were behind her, his hair on her neck.

Her blood still leaving.

"Caroline, Caroline ..." A man said as he looked to his hands, covered in blood. "I killed her."

".em saw ti thgouht I ?ouy it saW"

".htaed fo shtaerb eht nI .mih ot llef I oga gnoL"

"... em syawla ti saW ?wowK I diD"

".lareves esac ym nI, dnah a dah lla eW .syawla toN"

Was she gone, this Laura Palmer? The planet was glowing green, on, on, yellow. Why now was it changing?

White light flashed. Over and into darkness then returned. Laura was standing still, watching her with empty eyes. Another girl who looked like Laura, but as she later discovered, was not Laura, was instead Caroline. Then it was her, Annie. Caroline and Annie. Their hearts were as one in Cooper. Cooper. Cooper. Cooper. Cooper.

".kard eht nI .lla nI .sllirht rouy lla htiw noisiv a ni em ot emoC"

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~oOo~


End file.
